Notebook: Inside the tent

In saying that I have conflicting views about the hustling of
Julia Gillard
to her car through a cordon of Aboriginal demonstrators and police on Australia Day last month, I am merely reflecting a genuine confusion many of us feel.

The protesters later said that their anger was directed at the Opposition Leader; muscular, all-surfing, all-bicycling, former Catholic seminarian (like me) neo-con (unlike me)
Tony Abbott
. Yet I have to say Abbott’s remarks about the determinedly ramshackle Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, founded 40 years ago, did not seem to me racist or wild.

Though debate still rages over the benefits and failures of the (Northern Territory) intervention, it is argued even by many Aboriginal leaders that the Tent Embassy is an anachronism, a structure bespeaking division rather than reconciliation. Many of the Ngunnawal people on whose land it stands want it removed.
Warren Mundine
, a Sydney Aboriginal elder who is a former president of the Australian Labor Party, even quarrelled with the Australian Federal Police’s refusal to go ahead with arrests.

So nothing will finally allay hostility until Aboriginal equality is achieved by white goodwill and, above all, by indigenous education, political skill, and leadership. Until then, the mourning and the howling continues.